Breakdown:

Golden Eagles:

The Golden Eagles have had a rather impressive and successful regular season, ending it with a record of 5-2. Throughout the course of the regular season, the Golden Eagles have continuously shown that they are more than capable of keeping up with the best and most prestigious schools in the state of Kansas. Over the course of the regular season, this year’s crop of Golden Eagles football players have been continuously tested due to their historically difficult schedule. This will no doubt be one of the deciding factors in how the team is able to perform and function throughout the course of the playoffs.

Hornets:

As for the Valley Center Hornets, they finished the regular season with a record of 5-3. The Hornets had a difficult and tumultuous start to their season with the team dropping its two first games to Hutchinson and Goddard in a pair of close games, but immediately following the team’s 0-2 start the Hornets went on a three-game win streak to get their record to 3-2.The team them went 2-1 over the course of its last three games of the season. Through taking a close look at their schedule, it is not hard to realize and figure out that the Hornets have had a much more favorable schedule throughout the course of the regular season. This will no doubt give a big edge to the Golden Eagles this Friday night. The Hornets’ season has been largely taken up by low-scoring, close games, while in contrast the Golden Eagles have been able to put up consistent points over top teams like Kapaun, Bishop Miege, Derby, and Lawrence.

Adrian’s Prediction:

Despite both teams’ similar records, I fully expect the Golden Eagles to put up a dominant performance this week against the Hornets to start their playoff run. I expect a high-scoring game for the Carroll offense led by Hunter Trail and Aiden Niedens. Niedens, at QB, has been putting up stellar performance  after stellar performance throughout the latter half of the regular season and I expect for him to put on yet another great performance this week to start off the team’s playoff run. The Golden Eagle defense will likely shut down the Hornet offense this week, which in turn will cause the Hornets to go under a double-digit lead early on in the night. The Golden Eagles will then proceed to not look back while scoring touchdowns in bunches, causing the lead to become insurmountable by the midway point of the third quarter. The Hornets will then score their second and last touchdown of the night late in the fourth quarter to effectively end the game at 45-14 in favor of the Golden Eagles.